Follow the Bouncing Case

Plaintiff Jon Del Arroz agreed to pay the costs when both parties asked the court to transfer his lawsuit against Worldcon 76 (“Jonathan Del Arroz vs San Francisco Science Fiction Conventions, Inc. (‘SFSFC’) aka ‘Worldcon76’ David W. Gallaher (2019), President et al.”) from San Joaquin County to Santa Clara County.

But on July 20 the clerk of the Santa Clara County Superior Court declined the transfer. Why? Because the $50 transfer fee and first appearance fee (probably $435) hadn’t been paid.

So what happened?

JDA says, “That’s all attorney stuff, I’m busy making books.”

The notice came to light during a periodic check of the San Joaquin court’s online records of the suit.

PDF copies of the motions filed in June are now available.

The Stipulation to Transfer Venue signed by JDA’s attorney on June 26 also features the admission that of the 18 defendants, only one, Worldcon 76’s parent corporation SFSFC, has been served with the summons and complaint as required by law.

Del Arroz’ “Make Worldcon Great Again” GoFundMe raised $3,043 to pay for this suit. Now that it’s public record that he hasn’t timely served nearly all of the defendants, therefore the court will have no jurisdiction over them, will his fans feel they got their money’s worth?

61 thoughts on “Follow the Bouncing Case

  1. Yeah, I had to block him again on Facebook last night because he kept trying to post slime to my timeline.

  2. Eric Franklin on August 2, 2018 at 10:12 am said:
    Can confirm: He’s reading this. Just got e-mail from him.

    That is not the trait of a successful author.

  3. By the way, yes, the first appearance fee for ‘civil case – unlimited’ at Santa Clara County Superior Court (San Jose) is indeed $435, as it is at San Joaquin County Superior Court (Stockton) — for the simple reason that California’s Superior Court system is run using a single set of rules, covering all 58 county courthouses. Ergo, one fee schedule for all.

    So, Del Arroz stipulated on June 26th that he was ordered to, and agreed, to pay the Stockton court’s $50 filing fee for transfer of the case, plus the destination (San Jose) court’s first appearance fee ($435), for a total of $485 — except that the Stockton court’s clerk hadn’t received the required dosh by July 20th.

    (ETA: I gather that the Stockton clerk then would send a $435 care package to his San Jose colleague, like ‘Hey, here’s some money to compensate you guys for having to handle this cruddy alleged lawsuit.’ One might hope for an EFT but I’m betting on cheques, because courts are often weirdly old-fashioned.)

  4. For those of us without a legal background, can you sum up the ramifications? What happens now?

  5. Worldcon’s lawyer filed a motion saying the first four parts of JDA’s complaint don’t have a basis in law, and the judge agreed, which means that part of the lawsuit is tossed out. The fifth part, defamation, is still on the table, but Worldcon has other motions they could file to get that tossed, too. We’ll find out in a couple of months.

    IANAL, but I think the easiest translation is Worldcon pointed out that JDA’s lawsuit was bullshit, and the court agreed.

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